http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THE HEADLINE announced the latest disaster: "State Justices Deal New Setback to Affirmative
Action."

In California, voters passed Proposition 209, a ballot initiative to end race- and
gender-based preferences in the areas of government contracting, hiring, and admissions into
state colleges and universities. Last week, the California Supreme Court applied 209 and
unanimously struck down the so-called "outreach" program of San Jose. The city required
contractors to demonstrate an attempt to recruit and use female- and minority-owned
subcontractors.

Justice Janice Rogers Brown, an appointee by a Republican governor, wrote, "A participation
goal differs from a quota or set-aside only in degree. By whatever label, it remains 'a line
drawn on the basis of race and ethnic status' as well as sex." For what it's worth, Justice
Brown is black. Like Clarence Thomas, she, too, received no support from the black bar. And a
State Bar Association committee determined her "unqualified," despite possessing more
experience than former California Chief Justice Rose Byrd, appointed by Jerry Brown. For that
matter, she possesses more experience than did Chief Justice Earl Warren, the former California
Governor. No State Bar committee found either Byrd or Warren unqualified. But we digress.
Don't affirmative action proponents get it? The fat lady is singing. The moral, constitutional
and tactical argument for affirmative action remains bankrupt. Discrimination to fight
discrimination remains discrimination.

Slavery ended nearly 150 years ago. This wrong cannot be righted. For all a state can be is
just in its own time.

Doesn't this historical unfairness justify programs like affirmative action? No. As Booker T.
Washington said, in 1901, a mere 35 years after emancipation, "When a Negro girl learns to
cook, to wash dishes, to sew, to write a book, or a Negro boy learns to groom horses, or to
grow sweet potatoes, or to produce butter, or to build a house, or to be able to practise (sic)
medicine, as well or better than some one else, they will be rewarded regardless of race or
colour (sic). In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race,
religion, or previous history will not long keep the world from what it wants."

Just how bad is it for blacks in America? While parents complain about under-performing inner
city schools, Asian kids attending these same schools out-perform whites on standardized tests!
Many Asian families send their children to "cram" schools, where they get additional education,
after school and on weekends. Midtown Los Angeles Korean newspapers publish not only the
colleges Korean high school grads plan to attend, but their SAT scores as well.

Johnnie Cochran tells us, "Race plays a part of everything in America." Yet, through his hard
work and talent, he became one of the nation's most prominent defense attorneys. Former
California Speaker Willie Brown, a black man who held this powerful position for 15 years, once
defended affirmative action by telling white newspaper writers, "You owe me." Yet, this son of
a sharecropper, through talent, hard work, and ambition, wielded power for some 15 years as
perhaps California's most powerful political leader.

How bad is it? A Time/CNN poll found that, among black teens, 89 percent found little or no
racism in their own lives. If things are so bad, why does the white suicide rate exceed that of
blacks? Why, according to a study by the American Association of University Women, do black
boys register higher on self-esteem tests than do white boys? Why, according to an article in
Psychology Today, do black girls show more confidence in their bodies than do white girls, a
group obsessed by the impossible-to-emulate Barbie doll physique?

In 1963, the black monthly magazine Ebony asked prominent blacks to offer advice to young
people. Union leader A. Philip Randolph, who founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters,
offered this: "Negro youth must offer the future the same things that white youth offer, and
they must have the faith that there is no basic racial difference in potential for achievement
-- moral, intellectual, or spiritual. The future holds great opportunity for those who are
prepared to meet and face the challenge of this age of science, technology, and industrialism,
and social, economic, and political change."

Funny, Randolph failed to mention affirmative action.

So, to the condescending, but well-intentioned, affirmative-action-supporting whites, know
this. Drop the guilt. For you have about as much in common with a Southern, 1950s
segregationist as Colin Powell has with Al Sharpton. It is now the year 2000. Let's move
on.